Sitting Out Part 2 (diary entry)

Studded tyre Español: Neumático de invierno con clavos, modelo Nokian Hakkapeliitta 4 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

15.08.12

Today’s mandate for the private lesson was a bit of stick-work and striking with grappling. We used some basic kali stick work to warm-up with, just working different angles of attack and some stick-on-stick drills to look at trapping. Mo Teague, Floyd Brown and Hock Hocheim have all inspired me to look at the basic principles of training evasion. Before one learns how to block it helps to get the correct body movement and a great natural way to do that is practice avoiding different angles of attack. Floyd Brown called it an “intuitive” method. Hock Hocheim described the method as a means for promoting “elasticity” in one’s response. We moved onto empty hand responses, moving into kickboxing.

We then moved back onto the focus mitts and Thai pads to revise the previous to lessons. Hand strikes are the fastest natural weapons, so they set the pace for kicks and grappling. We worked on mixing the hand strikes with kicks and later would do the same with the grappling. Combinations including same side punch/kick and reverse sides.

Grappling began with grip fighting and then revision for underhooks and arm-drags, performed standing and from butterfly guard. We looked at the sprawl and the sit-through; essential counters in wrestling and submission fighting.

We finished the lesson with a Tabata session:

30 seconds press and punch

30 seconds sprawl/dead lift

30 seconds bag climbs

30 seconds rapid kicks

30 seconds sledgehammer swings to tractor tyre

30 seconds box jumps onto tractor tyre

30 seconds tractor tyre drags

30 seconds car tyre chops

5 minutes warm-down

We discussed the importance of self-coaching and how to develop routines specific for combat.